pay for gas. If you want to get home, you’ll do what I say.”
“You have to get home too,” Murphy challenged. “You need Eileen’s van. I heard you say so yourself.”
Claire laughed again, like a rabid hyena. “I don’t need that van. I told you, I have money. Enough to get a ride back to Emmet.”
“Whoa,” said Murphy. “For a three-hour trip? That’s your college fund.”
“Much good it’s doing me,” Claire muttered.
“What does that mean?”
Claire’s eyes met Murphy’s. There was a flicker there in the blue—a possibility. Claire opened her mouth to speak. Then, she seemed to reconsider, shook her head, and walked on.
They’d been ascending the bluff through a drizzle, and the rain-slicked road had leveled out, revealing the topmost gables of the house. At the sight, goose bumps formed on Murphy’s arms—the weather’s doing, that was all. Still, for a moment, Murphy let herself wonder if this Mark Enright dude really was a murderer. If, maybe, he’d found out who had inherited his old house and if, maybe, he was mad about that.
Murphy didn’t know how a house could look scarier in the daylight than in the dark. This one did, though—its gables pointing up like teeth into a moody sky.
Blood all over those parlor walls.
Head bashed in like a cantaloupe.
What had really happened in this place?
Yes, it was an adventure. It was drama.
It was also terrifying.
But Murphy had made a point to tell Claire she wanted to stay. She couldn’t act scared, like a kid. Like they expected. This was a time for being brave. For making memories. For magic.
Murphy had been to a haunted house before, on a school trip to Oregon’s one and only amusement park, Enchanted Forest. It had been creepy, sure, and she’d screamed once when Derek Huggins had jumped out from behind a dark corner. But that had been for fun.
This was an actual haunted house. A place where people had been killed, for real.
Murphy reached into her coat pocket, grabbing hold of the rope trick she’d packed there. She didn’t care about forming a knot, just needed something to hold on to. She thought of the trick’s instructions: over, under, tug through and out. She repeated them to herself internally. A mantra. A bit of magic in the face of murder.
SIXTEEN Eileen
I’m giving you an hour.”
“Sure, Claire. Sure.”
Because, seriously, with the level of absurdity emanating off her sister, the only thing Eileen could say was, Sure, Claire. Sure. The same way she had for months:
“I don’t want pizza. Don’t you know how bad gluten is for your gut?”
Sure, Claire. Sure.
“You use way too much eyeliner. If you’d watch these tutorials …”
Sure, Claire. Sure.
“It’d help if you could take out your own trash.”
Sure, Claire. Sure.
And if Claire thought she could dictate Eileen’s life now, of all times …
Sure, Claire.
Sure.
They’d see what came of that.
Eileen intended to spend as much time as she goddamn pleased inside this house. A couple murders weren’t going to keep her away.
Especially since she’d already known about them.
When Eileen had gone snooping in the linen closet two years ago, she hadn’t been looking for something that would break her life apart. Who in their right mind would do that? Who’d search for a box of letters that would tell her a dozen truths she didn’t want to know? Who’d drink a quarter bottle of Jack Daniel’s every night to forget what she’d read? Who’d trash her arts programs applications, because she didn’t see the point? Who would, instead, work a mind-numbing, foot-killing job at Safeway forty hours a week?
No one sane.
So Eileen couldn’t be sane.
But it wasn’t that she wanted to be this way.
That’s what people like Claire and her perfect Harper Everly tribe didn’t get. Eileen heard what Claire called her behind her back, under her breath: Settler. Claire thought Eileen had a choice.
Eileen hadn’t chosen to read those letters, though. She’d been looking for painter’s tape and had thought maybe some could be stashed away in the shoeboxes Mom kept at the back of the closet. She figured they contained boring stuff you’d normally keep there: clothespins and spare staples and tacks—and maybe painter’s tape, too.
You just don’t think you’re going to get bad news in a linen closet.
That’s what had happened, though: In one of those boxes, she’d found the letters.
Eileen knew what hate mail was, theoretically. But nothing could prepare her for this.
The letters were addressed to “Leslie.” Her mother.
Well. Some of them read “Leslie,” while others opened with “You bitch,” or “Sinful whore.”