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WENDY WEBB
sweet grin into a wicked smile baring the teeth of a predator.
Adele tried to tear her eyes away from the image but found she
was caught there, locked into what ever malevolent magic had
suddenly taken hold of the page. She could not look away as the
image of Fate’s beautiful face morphed into that of a hideous
demon.
“I’m coming for you,” the image hissed.
Adele’s eyes shot open and she sat up with a start. She looked
around her room, quieting her racing heart by taking in the
familiar— yes, there was her desk, the replace, the tapestry
hanging on the wall— reminding herself she was safe. at ter-
rible day was long in the past. But even a er a lifetime lled with
love and loss, births and deaths, weddings and funerals, and the
glorious minutiae of everyday living, the memory still gnawed at
Adele, creeping every so o en out of the vault she had con-
structed inside of her heart to contain it.
A so rapping at the door brought Adele back to herself,
shaking the familiar dream and the ache that always came with
it from her mind.
Jane poked her head into the room. “You awake, Mrs. Al-
ban?”
“I’m up, Jane.” Adele smiled as she slid her feet into slippers
and rested a moment, making sure she was steady enough to
stand. “It’s a strange sensation, dreaming I’m twenty years old
and waking up to seventy. Doesn’t seem quite fair, somehow.”
“Beats the alternative, so it does.” Jane chuckled, crossing the
room to draw back the curtains and open the French doors lead-
ing out to the patio. “I’ve got your breakfast all set up out here.
Shall I help you?” She came toward Adele, holding her arms
wide.
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“I can manage, for goodness’ sake.” Adele wrapped a thick
terrycloth robe around her brittle frame. “She’s old and rusty,
but she still runs.”
Jane hovered as Adele made her way out the doors and onto
the patio, where co ee, yogurt, croissants, and the morning pa-
per were waiting. Adele braced herself on the back of the chair
before sinking down into it. “Another gorgeous morning,” she
said with a sigh, gazing out over the lake. “I’ll tell you, Jane, if I
live to be two hundred years old, I’ll never tire of this view.”
Before her lay a wide expanse of water; steam hovered just
above the lake’s surface. A rower appeared out of the fog, glid-
ing up the shoreline before vanishing silently into the mist.
Inanother time, Adele would’ve been out there with him, greet-
ing the early morning with the familiar push- and- pull move-
ments she loved. Not anymore. How many de cades had it been
since she last rowed?
Jane poured a cup of co ee and Adele added a splash of
cream before li ing it to her lips, savoring the heat as it slipped
down her throat.
“ e journalist called again,” Jane sni ed. “He’s not going
away quietly, that one.”
Adele rolled her eyes as she tore o a piece of a croissant and
buttered it. “I’m too old for this, Jane.”
“Aren’t we all?” she said.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have opened the house to tours. It’s when
strangers started coming that all of this was dredged up again.”
Adele took another sip of her co ee, the dream still hovering
on the edges of her mind.
“You were here that summer,” she said, the past closing in
around her as she stared out across the hazy lake. “You had come
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4 W ENDY W EBB
WENDY WEBB
over from the old country with your mother years before, isn’t
that right? You were learning what it took to run this house hold,
even then, young as you were. Your mother was teaching you the
tricks of the trade.”
“ at’s right, ma’am, sure enough.” Jane smiled. It was a con-
versation the two women had had o en over the years.
Adele nodded and let out a sigh. “So long ago. You know,
Jane, you and I, Mr. Jameson, and Carter are the only ones still
alive who were here that summer. When we’re gone, nobody will
remember what really happened that day.”
Jane put a hand on Adele’s shoulder. “Aye,” she said, “but
perhaps that’s just how it should be. Let the spirits of the dead
rest, I say.”
Adele swiveled in her chair to look at the hill in the back
ofthe house. “I’m not so sure about that,” she said. “I’ve been
thinking— maybe I will talk to the man, Jane. Maybe it’s time the
truth comes out. Call him back, will you? Tell him to come this
a ernoon.”
She chewed her croissant as she considered what to do next.
“Before he comes, I think I’ll go for a walk on the hill,” she said
nally. “It’ll do me good, getting a bit of exercise.”
Jane crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Do you think
that’s wise, ma’am? You’ve been ill and . . .” She clucked in disap-
proval.
“Oh, I know it’s not wise.” Adele chuckled. “But at my age, who
cares?”
“Shall I ask Mr. Jameson to accompany you?”
“I’m sure he’s got enough to do in the garden.” Adele smiled,
rising from the table. “I’ll be ne on my own.”
Jane knew better than to try to talk the woman out of what-
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5
ever she set her mind to doing. Half an hour later, she watched
from the patio as Adele pushed open the side door, waved, and
started across the lawn.
e walk took Adele’s breath quickly, much more quickly
than she had remembered, and at this, she smirked. e ravages
of age. When she reached the hilltop, she sank down into the so
grass, breathing heavily, and surveyed what was before her.
From this height, she could see all een acres of the
property— the house, the extensive gardens, the lawn, and the
lakeshore beyond it. If she turned a bit, she could follow the shore-
line all the way to downtown, where new shops and restaurants
were popping up in the century- old storefronts. She saw the
paved path, all four miles of it, snaking along the shoreline,
where people were riding their bicycles, walking dogs, or run-
ning. A single freighter hovered on the horizon of this Great Lake
as gaggles of kayakers paddled their way up the shore. Tourists
were waking up in the hotels along the beach, she thought, and
marveling at the view. It really was quite magni cent.
at’s when she heard the noise, so and low. A delicate hiss-
ing on the wind. Whispers all around her. Adele put a hand toher
throat and turned her head this way and that but saw nothing
out of the ordinary. Grass bowing low in greeting to the so
breeze. A hummingbird visiting a ower. A caterpillar feasting
on a leaf. She exhaled, satis ed she had been imagining things.
No whispers here.
But then she heard it again. Louder this time. A voice?
She tried to listen closely— her ears were full of the ringing
that came with age— but she couldn’t quite make out what the
voice was saying. She wasn’t even sure of the language. It sounded
ancient and guttural, like it was coming from another place, a
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6 W ENDY W EBB
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more savage and primitive time. And then the memory hit her—
she had heard this voice once before, on a summer night many
years ago. But it couldn’t be. Could it?
Adele shuddered and rose to her feet, wanting very much to
be in the company of someone else. Jane, Mr. Jameson, anyone.
She hurried down the hill toward the fountain where she had
found him that night, all those years ago. But the voice was
louder there. It came swi ly nearer until it was right behind her,
whispering in her ear. She swung around and could not believe
her eyes. What sort of magic is this? It was the last thought that
ran through her mind before everything went black.
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C H A P T E R 2
CHAPTER 2
J
ane looked at the clock. at journalist would be here in no
time, now wouldn’t he? Where was Mrs. Alban? Jane rambled
from the living room to the library, poked her head into the
study— no sign of her employer anywhere. And she certainly
wouldn’t be in the kitchen, Jane thought with a hint of a smile.
“Mrs. Alban?” she called up the grand staircase. No response.
Jane put her hand on the cherry- wood banister and thought
about the dusting she’d do tomorrow.
Reaching the second oor, she scurried down the hallway
and knocked quickly on the door of the master suite. She pushed
open the door and poked her head inside. “Ma’am?”
And then it settled around her like a cloak, the deafening si-
lence. ere was no energy, no noise, no signs of life. is enor-
mous house was empty but for her.
Jane hurried down the stairs and out onto the front patio,
spotting the gardener kneeling over a rosebush.
“Mr. Jameson!” Jane called out, rushing toward him down
the smooth marble patio steps and into the immaculately mani-
cured En glish garden that he had coaxed to life in this harsh,
northern climate for a half century. She was out of breath when
she reached him and took a moment to recover before speaking.
“And what can I do for you, Mrs. Jameson?” Her husband,
omas Jameson, smiled at her.
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8 W ENDY W EBB
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“It’s herself,” she said breathlessly, looking into his eyes and
putting a hand on his chest. “She went out for a walk on the hill
this morning and hasn’t come back. at fool journalist is sup-
posed to be here soon, and . . .” She stopped as she watched her
husband’s expression fade from amusement into worry.
“How long ago, did you say?”
“About an hour. A bit more than that now.”
“Did she have any shopping to do?” Mr. Jameson asked, look-
ing across the rose garden toward the carriage house where
Carter, the family’s driver, lived. “I didn’t notice the car pull out,
but Carter might have driven her somewhere.”
Jane shook her head. “I don’t think so. Why would she go
anywhere when someone was coming here to meet with her?”
“All the same, I’ll check in with him. And I’ll get the lads to
help us search the grounds.” He put down his shears and took
his wife’s hands into his own. “Don’t you worry, dear. I’m sure
she’s all right. We’ll nd her. You go back up to the house now
and wait.”
As Mr. Jameson strode o in search of Carter and the two
young men he had hired earlier that spring to help with the gar-
dens, Jane hurried back up the steps to the house. Where was the
old girl? She rushed from one room to another, one oor to an-
other. Forty rooms later, Jane was o cially panicked.
She wound up in the green- and- black- tiled solarium, a room
full of leafy plants, gurgling fountains, and plush sofas and chairs,
where Mrs. Alban always took her tea in the a ernoons.
Breathing heavily a er all that rushing around, Jane sank
down onto one of the wicker chairs and shed a tissue out of
the pocket of her apron, dabbing at her brow. But she couldn’t
sit still. e feeling, the same one that had taken hold of her
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moments before when she was upstairs, was stronger now. No-
body else was alive in this house.
“Mrs. Jameson!” Her husband’s mu ed voice startled Jane,
and she pushed herself up to her feet and rushed out the doors
onto the patio where he and Carter were climbing the steps to-
ward the house.
“Well?” Jane asked, knowing the answer by the look on her
husband’s face.
“Nary a trace,” he said. “We’ve searched the entire grounds.
More than once. Even the cemetery beyond, thinking she might
have been visiting the relatives, so to speak.”
Carter shook his head. “I don’t like this.”
“I don’t like it, either,” Jane said, her voice a low whisper.
“Something just doesn’t feel right.”
“Aye,” her husband said, pulling the blue felt sherman’s cap
from his head and twisting it in his hands. “Aye.”
“Tell the lads to search the grounds again,” she said. “I’ll get
us some iced tea while we wait. But if they don’t nd her soon, it
might be time to call the police.”
A few moments later, Jane joined her husband and Carter on
the patio with a pitcher of iced tea and three glasses on a tray.
As she was pouring, Jane’s gaze dri ed toward the main
garden in front of the house, the one with the fountain and the
manicured hedges. Her shriek pierced the a ernoon’s silence as
the pitcher tumbled out of her hand and shattered on the cool
cement oor, the dark tea pooling in the crevices like blood.
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C H A P T E R 3
CHAPTER 3
A
er a restless ight from Seattle to Minneapolis, my daugh-
ter and I rented a car and drove northward, watching the
landscape change from city to suburb to farm elds to pine
forests. Cresting the top of the hill near Spirit Mountain, I took
a quick breath in as I saw the expansive view before me— the bay
between the cities of Duluth and Superior, the iconic Aerial Li
Bridge, rising and falling to accommodate the massive ships that
needed to get into the port, and the ood of city on either side
of the bay that seemed to have crested in my absence. Beyond
all that, the vastness and ferocity of Lake Superior shimmered.
Taking it in for the rst time in two de cades, I felt my stomach
twist itself into knots.
I had come home to bury my mother, an event that seemed
as surreal to me as the circumstances of her passing. As I drove
down the hill toward town, it felt like time itself was ticking
backward, the years folding in on top of themselves as though I
were lea ng through a book, back to the page when my mother
was a vibrant y- year- old who still rowed on this greatest of
lakes every summer morning. It simply didn’t seem possible that
death could nd her or, if it did, that she couldn’t persuade it to
come back another day.
I wondered if it all hadn’t been a mistake, if I would arrive at
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11
the house to nd her on the patio sipping a glass of lemonade or
a gin and tonic, as she liked to do in the summer months.
Looking back on it now, it wouldn’t surprise me if my
mother’s spirit had indeed been hovering as I drove toward the
house that day. Not to welcome me home but to warn me of what
was awaiting me there— memories that would unearth them-
selves from the graves I had dug to contain them, and things
much stranger than that, monstrous things that would creep and
lurk and hide. I’ve always known that old houses are full of such
things, Alban House most of all.
As I turned into our driveway, I gasped aloud when I saw a
ticket booth at the end of what was now a parking lot. I knew the
croquet lawn had been paved over, but it still gave me a jolt to see
dark asphalt where the grass my father tended so carefully—
obsessively, my mother always teased— used to be.
Visions of our annual summer parties crept into my mind—
girls in cotton dresses, boys in seersucker suits, lemonade we’d
secretly spike with vodka. A croquet tournament in the a er-
noon; a bon re on the lakeshore at night. I could see the shad-
ows of my brothers, the twins Jake and Jimmy, running their
ridiculous victory lap around the croquet lawn, mallets held high
over their heads. e sound of their laughter oated around me
before diminishing little by little until it was gone, as if it were
buoyed downstream on a river of memory that owed through
this place and through me.
My daughter’s voice pulled me back from those visions of the
past. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing toward the booth and
pulling the earbuds out of her ears for the rst time in the nearly
three hours it took to drive here from the Minneapolis airport.
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