The sound comes from somewhere outside. A gunshot.
My stomach roils. Greta screams. My head goes fuzzy.
A man appears in the doorway, his figure outlined by the moonlight. In the commotion, I can’t tell if it’s Lewis or EJ.
I turn to run, but someone grabs me. Two hands shove me forward, and I can’t see anything. “Stop! What are you doing?”
Beams of light from various cell phones scatter through the house, illuminating brief glimpses and flashes of the room and our faces. It’s total chaos. I can’t tell what’s happening.
I’m shoved inside the closet, and the door slams, blanketing me in total darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
MARTHA WILDE - 1938
The light is long and golden like straw shining through the trees, casting strange angles and dust that shimmers. My gran, Millicent, used to say that if you look closely, you can see spirits dancing in the woods every evening, keeping us safe. I think of them now, caught in a sunbeam, waving hello.
Keep her safe,I implore them, knowing they’ll hear.Keep them both safe.
The cabin creaks around us as I walk back into Foxglove, settling as if it’s preparing. As if it knows what’s coming.
Upstairs in the loft, Ruth’s breaths are coming faster and sharper, more primal. She breathes through the pain like she’s done before, in that way that comes naturally to us all, the way our bones just seem to know.
Even from the kitchen, I can hear her. There’s a low rhythm to the groans. Wind picking up before a bad rain. It’s music—the sound of holding on and letting go all at once. The sound of body-breaking pain and elating anticipation. Birth always sounds the same, no matter how many times you hear it.
Hazel plays by the hearth. She’s only seven, but even in a tiny body, she’s both serious and clever. She has the scene set—a neat row of the little wooden dolls I carved for her last Christmas.She’s given them all careers, unconcerned that they’re women, and I admire that small act of rebellion already starting.
They are preachers and teachers, nurses and waitresses.
“This one’s Ruth, like Mama,” she says. “And Martha, like you. That one’s Tabitha, but she doesn’t care for it.”
“I think it’s a lovely name, Tabitha,” I say in my most tender voice, playing along. I’m grateful for the distraction, truth be told, as I wipe down the already clean table.
I must keep moving as the evening wears on. There are too many memories that live in stillness. Too many worries.
Hazel looks up at me then, her eyes dark as night like her mother’s, like mine.
“Gran, is it true Foxglove’s haunted?”
The question throws me, making me pause. I turn toward her, hand on my hip. “Haunted? Where on earth did you hear a thing like that?”
She gives me a deep frown. “Agnes said her father says she can’t come to Foxglove to play. She says he told her it’s haunted here. It’s not true, is it?”
I chuckle, crossing the room to kneel beside her. “You know, there are some people in this world who can’t sleep unless they’ve got something to worry about. Something to be afraid of. It sounds to me like Agnes’s father is just looking for something to help him sleep.”
She gives me a crooked smile, missing both front teeth. “What do you mean?”
“Well…” I lift her onto my lap, smoothing her skirt. “If you’ve got a name for your fear, something you can point at and stay clear from, it makes you feel safer, in a way. A ghost’s just one name for something you don’t understand.”
Her eyes narrow, and she looks away, thinking. Then she finds me again. “So…is that a yes? Or a no?”
A laugh bubbles out of me without warning. She’s never been one to let me get away with nuance. “It’s neither.” I bump my nose against hers, then pull back, rubbing her leg. What can I tell her, really? “Here’s what I know. This house has held a lot of women. A lot of love, yes, but a lot of pain, too. Maybe the walls remember it all. The good and the bad. Maybe that’s all a ghost is. A place that remembers.”
Hazel is quiet, and I can see her mind processing, wheels turning. She looks at the wall, as if trying to see straight through it. “Are we strange? Agnes said her father says we’re strange.”
My smile softens, an ember of rage in my chest. I brush a lock of hair back from her brow, weighing my words carefully on my tongue before I speak. “Strangeisn’t always a bad thing to be, I’ll have you know.”
“But I don’t want to be strange.”
